The present invention relates to calculators and more particularly to calculators for processing student grades.
Hand-held electronic calculators have been developed for averaging student letter grades. These calculators facilitate the grade averaging which teachers must periodically compute, for example to produce semester grades and course grades.
One particularly useful and efficient calculator is that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,048,484, issued Sept. 13, 1977, to the present inventor, and entitled DIGITAL GRADE AVERAGER. This calculator can be used either as a conventional calculator or as a grade averager. A plurality of dual function keys enables letter grades to be inputted to the calculator when in grade averaging mode. The calculator converts each inputted letter grade to a numeric value, sums and averages the numeric values, and reconverts the average numeric value to a final letter grade. Although constituting a significant advance in the field, this grade averager is capable of averaging only letter grades. The teacher must still create a grading curve for each test, exam, lab assignment, term paper, quiz, etc. in order to assign letter grades capable of being averaged in the calculator. Creating these grading curves is relatively time consuming and not infrequently difficult.
Another grade averaging calculator is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,282,580, issued Aug. 4, 1981, to McGuire et al, entitled POCKET CALCULATOR WITH GRADE AVERAGING FUNCTION. This calculator is also usable in either a standard calculator mode or a grade averaging mode. When in the grade averaging mode, only letter grades can be averaged. Consequently, this calculator suffers the disadvantages noted above.